Misplaced
by BittersweetBlasphemy
Summary: Twelve year old Rain is dying, but when she wakes up, she think it's all a dream. In a new body, under a new name, with a new family, Rain - now called Jayne Anderson - doesn't know that her old life didn't end, it simply rebooted, and now she has a chance to live the life she's always wanted.


Chapter One: A Bitter Taste in My Mouth

Nobody ever saw it coming, but then again, how could they? It wasn't in the human capability to be able to predict one's own death, not unless they chose it themselves.

It came as little shock to me, however. I had made the choice, wrapped up my old life in a few simple sentences, then headed out into the black, the weight of the world lifting itself from my shoulders.

For me, it didn't feel like I was ending my life, it just seemed like I was closing the cover on a really boring book; one I'd grown tired of pretending to enjoy.

At three am the streets might have well belonged to a ghost town. The only sound, a noise I would carry in my mind in my final moments, I could hear was the casual whistling of the wind. It fluted a tiny echo the empty early morning amplified.

So peaceful, I mused dreamily, drifting into an almost hypnosis. The sun has yet to begin to rise. The streets have fallen into a peaceful state of slumber.

Where I would be soon, hopefully,

Looking back at the last brief twelve years that were my life, I shook my head to think about how it had all gone so wrong. Secretly, I mourned for the innocent little girl perched on her mother's lap, her dad chucking at her affectionately. She would be laughing, reaching over to touch her daddy with her tiny starfish hands, and he would pick her up and cuddle her close, as she was his special treasure.

"Daddy, daddy," I'd squeal happily, skidding to a stop in front of him. In height, I barely came up to his knees, but he leaned down closer to me, "Daddy, look what I drew for you." I showed him the little picture, holding it proudly in both hands.

Carefully, he pulled the paper from my little fists, his eyes scanning across the page, "Did you draw this?" He asked, grinning broadly at me, "Aren't you a cleaver little girl." He kissed me firmly on the forehead.

For a man of forty three, he'd always looked surprisingly young and healthy for his age, his hair remained the thick, luscious chestnut colour it had been in youth, and his face crease free and fresh looking.

But ten years later, he turned fifty three, and he looked every day of it. It was my fault really. I had caused so much stress to fall over his head. Now his hair was deep grey at the roots, his formally handsome face folding in on itself. He usually kept to himself, locked away in a tiny conservatory, destroying his lungs with clouds of smoke and ash.

When you looked him in the eye, you saw the months of sleepless nights, the dark shadows. That sliver of undying hope twinkled within dead irises, all for nothing.

My fault, my fault, my fault, my fault, my fault, my fault,

Hot, moist tears pricked the corners of my eyes, "Daddy," I choked, failing to swallow the lump in the back of my throat, "Daddy, I'm so sorry."

The stars scattered themselves across the sky in the handfuls tonight, sparkling like freshly cut diamonds. It seemed so strange, thinking soon I would be up there sparkling with them. I knew that odd sensation was the realization that what I was about to do was real.

_Forgive me, I didn't mean for it to end this way. It'll be hard, I know, but we all knew this day was coming. One way or __the other I was going to leave you. I just didn't want you to have to suffer along with me._

The problems started six months ago, I'd been plagued by constant headaches. It was affecting my school work, my social circle, even my family.

My hand refused to steady, jostling the paintbrush left and right over the paper. I stared at the black smudges in disbelief. What the Hell was wrong with me, usually art was a breeze, but lately…

Lately nothing had been going right. My body, to simply put it, wasn't obeying what my brain was ordering it to do. It was the same in other subjects, my fingers were shaky over the guitar strings when I tried to play in music, they refused to work when attempted to play the piano, I couldn't even hold a pen properly in English; my handwriting looped across my exercise book in unintelligible scrawl, so messy even I couldn't read it.

_Mom, I know you were concerned right from the start. You took me to the doctors, and the__y__ assured you nothing was wrong with me. But as __the weeks went by, the conditions worsened. You feared for me, especially when the seizures started._

My mom and I had only just made it to the Mall when it happened. The fluorescent lights dangling from the ceiling triggered something. I staggered, coughing up bile from my throat, it pooled, white and foamy, onto the tiled floor. After that, nothing quite added up, I wasn't even aware of the ambulance they sent to retrieve me. All I could really remember as they led me away; a blur of red and blue.

_You__ told them it had never happened before, but that my physical state had been deteriorating dramatically over the last few weeks, and they brought you back an information pamphlet on teenage epilepsy, then they sent us home with a prescription and told us t__o call back if there was no change. I understand why you were so mad Mum, if I had been you, I would have been angry too. If the doctors had only acted sooner, maybe they could have saved my life._

They left it too late. By the next time another seizure hit me, I was at the top of a flight of stairs, and while they were scanning for broken bones at the hospital, they discovered it, too big to remove, and it was spreading rapidly around the rest of my body. Even the doctors blinked in shock at how far I was gone – how far they had allowed me to get.

"Miss Wilson, I need to talk to you and your daughter." The doctor said, sitting himself down on the edge of the bed, "I'm afraid we made a very terrible mistake the last time Rain was in our care. Do you remember?"

I nodded, "You told us I had epilepsy."

The doctor sighed, rubbing at his temple sadly, "I'm so sorry, but I was wrong, you see, Rain, when we were scanning you for any injuries you might have sustained during your fall, we noticed there was an irregularity with the tissue around your brain."

My eyebrows disappeared under the fringe of my hair, "An irregularity?"

"You have a tumour Miss Stevenson, and I'm sorry to say that it's too late for us to do anything."

My whole world came crashing down around me in little broken fragments, there was that bright future Mum had always told me had ahead of me, a future I wasn't going to see happen, and the inevitable truth slapped me straight in the face.

I wasn't going to grow up. I wasn't going to get married, or have kids of my own one day. I wasn't even going to live long enough to see another Christmas Day.

Mu number was up, they gave me two short months, sixty one measly days to wrap up what should have been more than seventy years, because I was going to die.

Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die.

For the next couple of days the word weaved itself in and out of my brain. Despite everybody's best efforts it always stayed lurking in the back of my mind.

_I'm not scare__d anymore. I just want you to be happy again, like you were before we discovered I had cancer. I know you never wanted to have to go through this, you always thought you had to die before me, but if I stay, even if the doctors decide that it would be worth__ trying to save my life, all that's going to happen is that we're all going to die. _

As the days crept by, slowly, the death clock ticking away while I was bedridden, the impending fear built up in my stomach. What would it feel like when I died, would it be peaceful, like slipping into a dream, or would it hurt, like a massive heart attack? The dread congealed n my stomach, swelling until it nearly fully consumed me.

"I don't want to die," I screamed, "I don't want to die. I don't want to die." The tears came streaming down my face, little gushing rivers of pent up aggression and worry. Not because I didn't want to leave my family behind, I knew they'd be able to look after each other after I was gone, but because I feared there would be nothing once I passed the void.

What was going to become of me?

I calmed down eventually, when I found out how much pain my tantrums were causing my family. They didn't deserve this, any of it. And over the course of the last couple of days, I devoted my time to building bridges and pushing them closer together, so they could cope when it was my time to leave.

Now, I decided, was that time. I'd made the choice a long time ago, that when I felt my mind begin to slip into a soft, forgettable mush, that I would take the leap of faith.

Scientists once said that our atoms where once part of a star, I'd spent most of my life wondering why I never fit in at home, now I knew, maybe I wasn't leaving, maybe I was going home.

_Mom, please don't cry when they find me. Don't feel bad that you out lived your only daughter. I want you to be happy, again, so don't feel like this is your fault. It isn't. You knew there was something wrong from the start, and you tried hard to help. Just always remember that, even though I'm gone now, that you still have a son that needs you, and a husband that will support you, and need you to support him. _

_Dad, please look after mom. She'll need you. And please don't let Nanan get so bad again. She needs you to support her. And I want you to know that I'll always love you. You weren't just the best Dad in the world. You were the Dad that other men should model themselves after. _

_Tell my friends that I don't hate them for abandoning me when they found out. It must have been hard for them. And they didn't want to sit around and watch me die. Don't want you to hate them either. They were like sisters to me in my short life. _

_You're probably wondering why I've done this, why I would take myself away before my time. I did this because you need your lives back, and I don't want it to end with me tearing you apart. I'm ending myself, before I break all of you down with me. _

_I love you,_

_Sorry I have to go,_

_Forever yours,_

_Rain _


End file.
